PART 2: The air in the hallway turned stagnant as …
The air in the hallway turned stagnant as my mother’s words hung there, heavy and suffocating. Raymond’s grip on his gold chain tightened until his knuckles turned white. Sarah, usually so quick with a sharp retort, looked as though she had been slapped.
“What do you mean, Mom?” I asked, my voice barely a whisper. The rage that had been fueling me since dawn was suddenly replaced by a cold, creeping dread.
My mother took a trembling step forward, prying her arm away from Sarah’s grasp. For the first time in fifteen years, she looked me directly in the eye, bypassing the “permission” of her eldest son. “The letters, Julian,” she sobbed. “The letters you sent. I never saw them. Not once.”
I felt the ground shift beneath my boots. “I wrote to you every Sunday, Mom. For fifteen years. I told you about the city, about the jobs, about how much I missed your cooking…”
“He told me you had forgotten us,” she cried, pointing a shaking finger at Raymond. “He told me you had started a new family in New York and that the money you sent was ‘charity’ from a man who didn’t want to see his mother starve but didn’t want to see her face, either. He said you hated this town. He said you hated me.”
A low growl escaped my throat. I looked at Raymond, who was now backed against the New York-style marble countertop—the one my sweat and labor had paid for.
“You told her I hated her?” I stepped into the house. The police officers didn’t stop me. They saw the raw agony on my face and remained as silent sentinels of the law.
“I was protecting her!” Raymond shouted, his voice cracking. “You were gone! I was the one who stayed! I was the one who dealt with her moods and her aging! You just sent checks! Anyone can send checks, Julian! I deserved that money. I deserved this life!”
“You didn’t just take the money, Raymond,” I said, my voice dropping to a dangerous, calm level. “You stole my mother’s heart. You let her believe her youngest son had abandoned her for a decade and a half.”
Mr. Sterling, the lawyer, cleared his throat and stepped forward, unfolding a ledger he had brought from the county archives. “It’s worse than that, Julian. While we were preparing the eviction notice this morning, I found the records of the ‘medical treatments’ Mr. Raymond Miller claimed to be paying for with your remittances.”
The social worker, a stern woman named Mrs. Gable, stepped toward my mother. “Mrs. Miller, have you been seeing a Dr. Arispe for your heart condition?”
My mother blinked, confused. “I… I don’t know a Dr. Arispe. Raymond brings me my pills every morning. He says they are expensive heart regulators from the city.”
Mrs. Gable took the plastic bottle from the side table and opened it. She sniffed the contents and frowned. “These are over-the-counter antihistamines, Julian. Allergy pills. They cost five dollars a bottle.”
The silence that followed was deafening. Sarah let out a small, pathetic whimper. My brother had been pocketing the thousands of dollars I sent for “specialized care,” letting our mother languish in a state of manufactured lethargy, drugged on cheap sedatives so she wouldn’t wander or ask too many questions.
“You monster,” I breathed.
